The halfway-house had not been a good place. Nor had it been an especially bad place. . . in fact, it had been a place for which, Taylor thought, it was very hard to decide one way or the other. He didn�t especially like it, but he�d been worse places. And his mommy seemed pretty good. That was good.
There was nothing distinctive about the place where Kathleen was staying. Perhaps the occupants of the Alice K. Lyons Center were unable to deal with the emotionally-twisting ups and downs of everyday life. Perhaps they felt unconnected to the center itself. . . the term �half-way house� referred to the act of passing through, of bridging one way of life to the next. . . and so the residents saw no reason to make the center theirs, knowing that they would soon be leaving. Either way, there was a curious emotional deadness that permeated the building, despite the holiday season.
It would be hard to be really happy here, Zac thought, swinging his legs back and forth as he perched on a bench in the hallway, but there�s nothing to make you sad, either. His mother didn�t seem happy or sad. She didn�t seem mean, either. . . in fact, she was way nicer than she usually was. She kept saying that she wanted a second chance, that she wanted to make everything right. If you had asked Zac, he would have told you that he was pretty happy with the way things already were.
We can live with Dan and Nora, Zac thought, and Mommy can live here, and sometimes we can come and see her. It seemed like a good plan to him, and he was rather surprised that no one else seemed to have thought of it first. Hopping down from the bench, he went to go find Isaac.
"Ike!" Zac found his older brother in the room where their mother was staying, sitting against the bed with a book in front of him. Every once in awhile, Isaac�s mouth would move silently as he struggled to sound out a word he didn�t know, but other than that, he was motionless. He didn�t even look up when Zac came into the room.
Zac put his hands on his hips and scowled. "IKE!" he yelled, as loudly as he could.
Isaac jumped about three feet into the air. "Ahhhhh! Oh my God! What happened?"
"Nuffing happened." Zac rolled his eyes. "I just had a i-dea."
"That must be an unusual thing to happen to you," Isaac remarked.
"Why?" Zac demanded.
Isaac shook his head. "No reason. What?"
"It�s a i-dea �bout what we can do," Zac continued. "I was thinking, and I had a i-dea."
"What is your idea?" Isaac asked.
Zac paused. He scratched his head. "I don�t a-member it any more."
Isaac sighed. "Okay." He started to go back to his book.
"Hi!" Taylor sang out, entering the room. In his arms, he clutched a large baby doll, her glassy blue eyes clicking open and shut as he bounced through the door.
Yesterday, they�d opened one present each, and Taylor had gotten a doll. The people at the center had offered to let him trade her in for a truck, but Taylor had looked horrified at the prospect.
"No!" he�d gasped. "I can�t give her away! She�s my baby."
"But wouldn�t you rather have a nice truck, son?"
Taylor shook his head, cradling the doll in his arms. "No, not a truck. With a truck you can only fill it up with dirt and crash it into things. With a doll, you can dress it up and feed it, and you can sing songs to it. And you can hug it." He�d relayed this information seriously, terrified that they�d try to take his present away from him. "You can HUG it!"
"Okay, you can keep the doll," the woman in charge of the Christmas presents promised him. "If it means that much to you, you can keep it."
"Thank you!" Taylor had exclaimed, his heart pounding in his chest as he squeezed the doll as tightly as he could. "Thank you!"
"Tay, don�t you want a truck more than you want a stupid doll?" Isaac asked now, watching his brother pat the doll on the back.
"Ike," Taylor had said, sounding dismayed, "how can you say something like that when she can hear you?" He covered the doll�s ears. "Don�t worry, baby. I won�t let Ike talk like that. He�s mean, isn�t he, wanting to give you away?"
"She can�t hear me, she�s plastic." Isaac knocked on the doll�s head. "There�s nothing in there!"
"IKE!" Taylor snatched the doll away and kissed it�s forehead. "Don�t hit her! You have to be careful with babies. They can break." He smoothed the doll�s painted-on hair. "What do you think I should name you, sweetheart?"
"How about ugly?" Isaac asked.
Taylor was scandalized. "You are the meanest uncle I ever heard of."
"I don�t want to be an uncle!" Isaac protested.
"You have to be," Taylor insisted.
"But I don�t want to be. . . " Isaac began.
"You have to be." Taylor told him, decisively. "You don�t get a choice."
"I like the name Alice!" Zac piped up. "That�s Snuffy�s little sister. On Sesame Street."
"I�m not going to name her after a Snuffolupagus," Taylor scoffed.
"I�m not sleeping in the same room as that thing!" Isaac exclaimed. "It�s scary-looking!"
"Well, then. . . you can sleep in the hall," Taylor decided. It was an easy decision to make.
"Why doesn�t she sleep in the hall?" Isaac asked. "Or better yet, in the garbage can outside?"
"No. . . I don�t want anyone to step on her," Taylor pointed out. "And if she sleeps in the garbage can, she�ll get dirty. And she�ll be lonely."
"You can sleep with her," Isaac offered, but Taylor wasn�t listening.
"I know!" he exclaimed. "I�ll call you. . . Baby Manda."
"I like Alice better," Zac pouted.
"That�s the most dumbest name I ever hear of," Isaac agreed.
"It is not dumb!" Taylor�s face turned red with anger. "It is not!"
"Is too," Isaac shot back.
"Is not." Carefully, Taylor set Baby Manda into his older brother�s arms. "Here. You hold her while I get her a little bottle to drink."
"I don�t want to hold her." Baby Manda�s vacant blue eyes stared directly into Isaac�s, and he drew back, repulsed. "Zac, you hold her!" He tossed Baby Manda to Zac, who didn�t catch her.
"I don�t like that baby," Zac decided, kicking Baby Manda into the hall.
"Stop it!" Taylor wailed, scrambling to collect his doll. "Leave Baby Manda alone!" He gathered the smiling doll into his arms and began kissing her injuries. "I�m not going to play with you any more," he decided, glaring at his brothers. "You�re mean."
Taylor sat down on the bed and drew Baby Manda into his lap. "Me and Manda are going to sit here until we go back to Dan and Nora�s house."
It was then that Kathleen appeared in the doorway, quiet and subdued after an early morning counseling session. "What�s going on?" she asked quietly, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
"They were-" Taylor began, ready to expose his brothers as the coldhearted villains they were.
"Nothing," Isaac interupted him. "Just. . . playing. And getting ready to go, I guess."
Kathleen nodded. "You were being good?"
"Yeah," Taylor agreed. He ran an exploratory finger down the ridge of Baby Manda�s nose. "We were good."
"We were good," Zac echoed.
Kathleen nodded. After two days, she was still unused to her sons, not quite sure what to say to them. There had been times during the past few weeks when a strong sense of loss and longing had pervaded through her body, times when she had really, really missed them. Eventually, the yearning had settled around her like a cloak, and she remained wrapped in it, though not overwhelmed by it, except late at night, when she lay alone in her room. She�d fight off the emptiness as long as she could, but the void would always win in the end, creeping over her body like a slow-moving paralysis.
Kathleen, despite all of her shortcomings, did love her sons. She just didn�t know what to do with them, overwhelmed by their needs, by the demands she felt they made on her. No sooner would she manage to focus on one than his brother would start clammering for her attention, until she felt that she was neverendingly being torn to pieces. Sometimes, she could hardly stand it anymore. Sometimes, she was honestly worried that she might kill them. That was why she left. . . not just to save herself, but to save them.
Watching Taylor with the baby doll stirred in Kathleen memories the night Isaac was born, of holding him in her arms for the first time, unable to find the words to describe all of the emotions she was feeling. She only knew that she had never felt any of them before; and she didn�t quite understand a single one. She�d been so young then, she thought. She should have waited. She shouldn�t have had kids at all. She wasn�t any sort of mother.
Still, she hadn�t known that then. Holding her baby in her arms for the first time, letting his tiny fingers clench around one of her own, Kathleen had been aware only of the strongest attachment she had ever felt to anything in her life. When they�d lifted Isaac out of her arms to take him back to the nursery, she�d been sure she would never see him again. She�d lain there in the dark, crying quietly, until gray dawn light streaked across the sky and they wheeled the babies back in for their six o�clock feedings. Robby had staggered in three hours later. He�d spent the night getting drunk, but he had stopped at the grocery store on his way to the hospital and picked up a bouquet of flowers and a few jars of baby food. He appeared in front of Kathleen penitently, extending his offerings in a plastic grocery bag. Kathleen forgave him; she was still infatuated with the baby. She even pretended she didn�t mind about the baby food. "He can eat it in a few months," she�d smiled.
"He," Robby had smiled, but the prospect of having a baby. . . having an actual baby. . . scared him out of his mind. He was glad it was a boy. . . a girl would have been way worse. . . but the fact that the squalling little creature in the bed was his son, his baby, was the most terrifying fact he�d ever faced. He wanted to ask if Kathleen was sure it was his, but he knew she�d flip out at him.
"I think he has your eyes," Kathleen cooed. Most babies are born with blue eyes, and it wasn�t until Isaac was nearly two months old that his eyes darkened to the color of his mother�s. "Blue."
"Yeah," Robby noted, wanting to leave.
"I bet he�ll look like you," Kathleen adjusted the baby�s blankets.
"Yeah." Robby glanced toward the door. "Yeah, well. I should go. I�m kind of. . . busy."
"You have to?" Kathleen looked crestfallen. "Already?"
"Yeah," Robby agreed, nodding. "Maybe I should get. . . diapers and stuff." (And really, really drunk, he thought.)
"Oh." Kathleen�s voice was tiny. "Oh. . . okay, then." She tried to smile. "You�re busy."
"Yeah, well. . ." Robby began. "Yeah. Anyway, I�ll go do. . . the stuff I have to do." He had never been as good a liar as his son would turn out to be. "I�ll. . . maybe I�ll be back later."
"Oh." Kathleen nodded. "Oh. . . okay." She wished Robby would stay. She willed him to stay. But the one thing Kathleen had learned in the year they�d been together was that it was impossible to make Robby do anything he didn�t want; to force him to please anyone except himself.
"I�m not some frickin� Gandhi," he�d say. Kathleen didn�t know who Gandhi was, but the name conjured images of self-sacrifice and tireless devotion. Two things, Kathleen reflected, she did not see much of in Robby. In those days, though, she�d been hesitant to concentrate on any of his shortcomings, and she tried not to let them bother her.
"You don�t have to stay," Kathleen had offered.
"Okay, baby, I�d better go then." Robby had given her a quick kiss on the forehead, chucked the baby under the chin, and was gone. It was at that moment that Kathleen realized, shocking even herself, that she�d rather have Robby than the baby. If the baby was going to come between them, Robby�s affection was more important to her than her love for the baby, who couldn�t respond to love she gave him anyway. Kathleen had taken a deep breath, holding her son a bit closer. She couldn�t let herself think like that, she thought. She had to keep them both close to her, keep all three of them together. Robby would love the baby as soon as he got used to him.
And it was true that Robby did love the baby. He never knew what to when Isaac cried, he didn�t know how to feed him, he refused to change diapers, but he�d stand above the crib and look down at the baby, marvel at him, and show him off to his friends. . . at least until the novelty wore off. Eventually, Robby was the one to suggest they have another one. Kathleen, hoping another child would prove to be the bond that would connect to Robby forever, agreed whole-heartedly.
When Taylor was born, though, Robby didn�t even bother to come by the hospital. The baby was three weeks early, the scrawniest baby Kathleen had ever seen, but also the loudest. Taylor screamed constantly. He didn�t gain weight, he didn�t get any bigger, and when Kathleen took him to the clinic to see what was wrong they loaded her down with all sorts of fancy formulas and told her to feed him every two hours. Kathleen was exhausted, irritable, overworked and desperate. Increasingly, Robby found fewer and fewer reasons to be home.
In frustration, Kathleen had taken the boys and moved into her mother�s house. Her mother was unused to babies. . . in fact, she found all children under twelve very difficult to tolerate. . . and Taylor�s incessant shrieking only added to the tension. When Robby had shown up, a sorrowful look in his eyes, promising to reform himself if only she�d take him back, Kathleen had relented. The baby was older now; a bit bigger and comparatively calmer, and Isaac, during the months of living with his grandmother, had become a quiet, watchful little boy, alert to any sound or behavior that would "make Grandma mad." Kathleen hadn�t considered why her oldest son was prenaturally silent, compared to other kids his age, but it was a relief to her. . . as long as he wasn�t making noise, she appreciated it.
Kathleen shook her head guiltily. In spite of- or maybe because of- the fact that Isaac didn�t cause much trouble, she�d never been very tolerant with him. He learned early that if he misbehaved, he�d have to deal with the consequences. . . usually whichever punishment his mother thought of first.
You weren�t supposed to spank two year olds, Kathleen knew now, or lock them in closets, or tie them to chairs or beds. You weren�t supposed to send them out to the playground to play by themselves, or ask them to watch the baby so you could run out to the store. You weren�t supposed to go away for a few days and leave them with the baby so that you could get high. There were so many things she would have done differently, if she had had the chance to go back and do them again.
Even now, she thought, Isaac didn�t trust her. She saw him watching her out of the corners of his eyes, felt his body stiffen whenever she touched him. Kathleen could scarcely look at him sometimes; his very presence reminded her of everything she knew she�d done wrong. The guilt Kathleen felt was overwhelming; she was the one who�d taught Isaac not to trust. She was the one who�d introduced him to everything most eight year olds shouldn�t have had to know about. It was her fault, inescapably hers. Robby had been smart. . . he�d gotten out before he could inflict any physical damage on his sons. Kathleen was the one who bore that burden, and she bore it alone.
At the same time, Isaac was the one who enraged her the most. There were times, when she was drunk or high, or just so depressed and overwhelmed she couldn�t even see straight, that she couldn�t stand him at all, that he could have disappeared entirely and she never would have noticed. Kathleen knew that Isaac was everything she wasn�t; that somehow she had raised a son who was far more capable than she was, who could accept far more responsibility than she could, and who was, she knew, deep in her soul, a better person than she was. Kathleen didn�t understand where Isaac had come from, how he�d become the person he was, and she found herself wondering if maybe his better qualities came from Robby. The thought that any of her sons could have turned out like their absentee father enraged her and a demon burned away inside Kathleen. She wanted to destroy anything that was part of Robby, that even might have been part of Robby. Sometimes, when she allowed this part of her soul to take over her body, she couldn�t even see her children as her children anymore. She didn�t know what she was doing to them; it wouldn�t necessarily occur to her that she might have hurt them until long after she�d already done it.
In truth, Isaac wasn�t much like his father. . . at least, not the person his father had turned out to be. Robby had run away from reality, while Isaac, afraid or not, forced himself to face it. Robby lied to himself and to everyone else, making excuses to justify the things he knew in his heart to be unjustifiable. Isaac was honest with himself, at least- if he made up stories to protect himself and his brothers from forces that might otherwise tear them apart, he still knew that he was lying. Most importantly, Robby had run from responsibility, while Isaac had accepted way more than he should have had.
Isaac didn�t do these things because he was some kind of saint, or, in fact, because of any sort of qualities he�d inherited or learned from his parents. Isaac did them because he knew, deep down inside himself, that if he didn�t do them, nobody would. More than anything else in the world, Isaac wished that he could let somebody else be in charge for a change, but there was no one he trusted enough to want to relinquish his authority to. Not even Dan and Nora had earned that much of his faith. His mother, long ago, had lost any hope of gaining it back. If anything, Isaac knew, he should be taking care of his mother.
Kathleen relied heavily upon her oldest son, hating herself for doing it and hating him for seeming capable of letting her. She felt that he had somehow gained control of Taylor and Zac; that they were more his kids than they were hers. She felt the loss, unsure of what was required of her, of how she could get them back. At the same time, she didn�t know if she wanted the responsibility of them. Three kids was way too many, she thought again. I should have stopped before any of them were born.
Especially Zac, she thought. Why did I think I could handle another one? It had been a month before Robby left that Kathleen had discovered she was pregnant, and she had kept the information to herself, wondering how to tell him. She had hoped the news would make him stay; she was still naive enough to believe it would.
In fact, Robby had left the night she told him, a Sunday in early May when the air had crackled with electricity in anticipation of a coming storm. "How could you have let that happen?" Robby had asked, lacking the energy even to fight. "That was really stupid."
He was gone by the morning.
When Zac had been born, Kathleen had wanted nothing more than for it to be over; her lack of interest in the baby was incredible. She didn�t even name him until she couldn�t put it off any longer, and then she�d asked the people at the social services office to pick one out. Isaac was four by then; nearly five; he�d been the one responsible for the other two most of the time. When Kathleen�s abusive boyfriend had directed his attention from her to the kids, Isaac had been the one who kept Zac from being hurt, but he couldn�t save Taylor. Or himself. They�d taken the kids away again that time, Kathleen thought, ripped them apart just when they�d begun to rely on each other the most. The separation nearly killed them. . . Taylor hadn�t talked for months, Isaac wouldn�t let either of his brothers out of his sight after they were reunited, and Zac, who had become strongly attached to the family that had taken care of him, was terrified to find himself deposited amongst people he thought were strangers. That was wrong, Kathleen thought. That was cruel. And the worst part was, she hadn�t been the one who screwed up that time. It had been her psychotic boyfriend, who�d ended up having numerous other abuse charges pressing on him at the time he was arrested. If she�d only known. . . if she�d only made a different decision. . . so much could have changed.
Kathleen looked at her sons now and felt awful. She�d talked to a lot of people during the past few weeks and tried to work out why she felt the way she did, and what she could do to change her behavior. She�d never had so many people who wanted to help her, but she was terrified she wouldn�t be able to live up to their expectations. In fact, she was sure she would screw up. It was only a matter of when.
"Mommy?" Taylor sat down next to her on the bed, cradling Baby Manda in his arms. "Was I like this when I was a baby?"
"Huh?" It took a long time before Kathleen realized what he�d asked her. "Uh, yeah. You cried a lot."
"I did?" Taylor traced Baby Manda�s mouth with his finger.
"Mmm hmm." Kathleen nodded, staring into space.
"Oh." Taylor held Baby Manda at arm�s length and inspected her carefully. He�d never had a doll before, and he didn't want anything to happen to this one.